Cast No Shadow
by AmberPalette
Summary: After being dragged ostensibly to his grave, and hovering in a torturous limbo with his "friends on the other side," the Voodoo debtor Facilier finds himself in New Orleans of 1935, forced to completely reinvent his life with unpromising odds.
1. Purgatory

Cast No Shadow

A Princess and the Frog Fanfiction

By Amber C.S. (AmberPalette)

Disclaimer: Walt Disney Pictures owns pretty much everything Dr. Facilier and all other characters of the Princess and the Frog. This is in all likelihood a one-shot I composed when trying to calibrate myself to the headspace of the delightfully groovy villain of the film, whom most people I know wish had not died, when he is reminiscing about his life while in a sort of limbo-torment at the hands of his "friends on the other side." But it also has the potential to become a longer fanfiction….someday. Potentially. Most likely. Because I am addicted to writing about villains and antiheroes. ADDICTED.

Dr. Facilier's given name "Michel" is the idea of FlamiatheDemon at . Give her props!

Enjoy the drabble!

* * *

Don't you dare call me a charlatan. Don't you dare….I'll show you. I'll see green. Green envy, green money, green…frogs….

_Michel, Michel! _ On and on, in a shrill voice. That's my name, ain't it? Goddamn. I forget why anyone's even calling me. At least by that name. Nobody in this town knows my given name anymore.

Oh but wait, who said I was still in New Orleans? I'm not.

At least a supernatural neon Voodoo mask with an ax to grind is no longer dragging me down to hell by my sorry legs. This isn't hell. It isn't earth either, and it sure ain't heaven.

It's…disorientation itself. That's what it is. It's acidic and hot-cold and it's terror and despair and a lot of other things thrown into a nauseating gumbo-pot. I am in the gumbo-pot of Beezelbub. And all my joints hurt like I'm ninety. And my skin hurts. My HAIR hurts. I'm spinning endlessly and voices are thundering in my head asking me if I'm ready, echoing my own credo, like a gospel choir of devils.

There are other voices too. Voices from people who are dead and gone. People I just might have once cared for. Maybe. And now I think my skin's on fire. Ohhhh, whoopee, joy!

Right.

_Meeeee-sheyull_, scolded my mama, who had dark nutmeg lines under her raisin-hued eyes, but, on account of her great shock of curly black hair, always looked like she was fifteen. The age she was when she conceived me. By some blue-eyed fella, Army man, on leave of the Spanish-American War, "confused," afraid to stick anywhere or to anyone, especially since his rich mama and daddy were going to cut him off if he continued any "exotic" liasons.

It's thanks to him I was born with cinnamon skin and blue eyes. Pale blue. Spectral blue. But, but: easy to adjust to a charming shade of amethyst with the right sort of Voodoo.

It's also thanks to him I was raised with a healthy streak of bitterness toward…people on the other side of the nice glass windows.

Like that big orange-haired buffoon who's a half-penny echo of cotton kings on horses with whips from not so long ago. And his vacuous-brained blond daughter. Like that apish clout, Jeeves or…Dawes or…Lawrence or some pompous Old-World anachronism, bursting with more leechy gall than I could ever have, banding together with me, the spineless and the cunning as one.

And people of my ilk, born in my world, who felt childishly romantic urges to join the ranks of Cotton Princess and her daddy, and disregard ME.

Like that industrious negro Cinderella lusting after a café and a playboy prince. Tiana, you stupid girl. You'll always be ALMOST there. They're only letting you pass as someone else. I know. Believe you me.

It's most likely why I made friends on the…OTHER other side…with which to punish them all. And win. And finally rule something of my own.

Mama hated my eyes. They made the lines under hers deeper. So when magic made me able, I fixed my eyes purple. Even though, by then, she was already dead.

Hey now, cherie. I never said I was a logical man.

Oh none of that. I will shove your pity up your fine little ass. I am explaining, friend, not lamenting.

I also did my eyes purple because it attracted more customers to my parlor. It intrigued them, my offbeat look.

That's right, I commercialized my mama's woes. Now where is your pity? Oho, ahaha! There we are. There's the disgust with which I am familiar. Yes, and always on the receiving end. While the fat cats ride by in their glistening cars without sparing so much as a passing….

Feh.

I even keep a shrunken head I joke about BEING my mama, you know. "I'm a royal on my mother's side." "Mother always taught me to apologize later 'stead of ask permission now." "My hair is voluminous and untamable like mama's." "That's a square deal right there, ask my mama." Always holding up the greenish shrunken head for a laugh.

Soooo. Where was I?

_Mee-SHELL, _mama'd squawk, _stop tormenting frogs or I'll feed you to old Odie! Sure as that gap between your two front teeth!_

Bluffs, I thought. Until the day I turned seven and she couldn't buy me anything to celebrate but a tarot card set at the dime store, and she found a sturdy rope and went down to the basement by herself, and didn't come back up by dinner time. They say it's a time for "Roaring" and flappers in gold dresses and streetcars that lead across marble streets of uniform American prosperity, but, cherie, some of us never partook of those things. Never.

Anyway, that's when a completely batty old hag in white with droopy earlobes hanging down under the weight of faux gold hoops, blind as a dingbat, took me in. Until I was the age my mama was when she conceived me.

I learned magic from Mama Odie. And then I learned more useful magic to boot. And she called me a foolish ingrate and stayed in her hellhole ship-house in the swamp, and I came back to New Orleans to sell myself and bide my time. Bought myself an old theater that went under when the moving pictures run 'em clean out of business. Turned it into my Voodoo Emporium, cut off little bits of my soul for loans from the darkest authorities in this world or the next, and waited for my prey. To make everyone I hated lower than me. And slimier.

It almost worked. Almost.

"I'm almost there…."

_Michel, why you always being cruel to them frogs?_

Well hell, Miss Tiana. Maybe I'm stupid, too.

_Michel! They's God's creatures too!_

Sorry, mama, I ain't listening. I stopped minding you when you went away.

Ever tasted frog legs, friend? Assuming you ARE a friend. And not a figment of my…tortured imagination. Heh. Right, so: The old adage about chicken completely applies, with a sort of…piquant fishy aftertaste. I always wanted to try frog legs when I was little. I didn't really fancy squelching through the bayou to catch one myself-since, aside leeches and gators, the crackers whose territory I'd be crossing always had guns-and I couldn't buy any until I was roundabout eighteen. And the extremely white man with the extremely yellow teeth who ran the joint kicked me out mid-meal. Sort of anticlimactic, you know.

I learned the art of manipulating poppets that year. My first one had very yellow teeth. I picked a real good sewing needle for that one. Shiny steel.

Heh.

There my mind goes wandering again. My mouth's a damn motor. Fi'tty mile an hour. I'm a Gemini, you know, that means quicksilver tongue and a lady in every port (mighty accurate suppositions, those). And it means my mouth usually gets me out of trouble, but lately, it's been getting me right back into it too. I need to stop jabbering and focus.

Focus…debt. DEBT. That's a nastier four-letter d-word than "damn." Especially when you tack on an s at the end, and it becomes the very inconvenient thing called DEBTS. Plural. No fun at all. Trust me there.

_Michel, Michel, stop tormenting the frogs…_

Huh. Thought if I was dead I'd be seeing mama again. I can hear her, but I can't see her. All I can see are roiling, sorta…sick…neon colors. Haven't thought about my mama since she up and killed herself. Not sure if that means I'm "emotionally uninvested" or whatever the newest psychologists like to theorize. Most likely it means I just took a hard look at my situation and cut my losses, and kept going…

With my tarot cards…never did stop using that first set she gave me. Up till my last breath.

Oh, you know what, I got it! I'm not dead. Oh Facilier, go to BED. You genius.

…Well, but hell. Where am I?

You know, I always thought of myself as some nimble little critter on a long red wire suspended over the bayou, complete with hungry gators. There was something downright exciting about teetering around on that wire, taunting those fat opulent-scaled gators but never quite satisfying their gluttonous bellies, even taking a piss or two on their heads…but damned if this time I didn't fall clean into the water and get…chomped on. A bit. Well alright, a lot.

It hurts. My hide is hard but I'm skinny. And I can't deflect none of my crimes onto my Shadow no more, cause he up and left me. It doesn't take much bruising to hit my vital organs. I need to get out of this goddamn purgatory.

I think I'd rather be in hell and have it done with. Walk straight on into hell and be _gone_. But they aren't letting me. I've been batted around like a scrawny mouse by a few particularly vicious alley cats, feathery black shadows with long fangs and long claws, the past…damned if I know (possibly literally, though if you don't mind, I'd rather not dwell on it like that). Coulda been ten seconds, coulda been ten years.

I just want out. Out, OUT. OUT, damned spot, as the fancy actors say. Oh LORD that smarts! I'll do anything. ANYTHING! Isn't that a fair offer?

Shake a poor sinner's hand!

On second thought that hurts…I think that cracking was all the little bones in my digits…STOP…!

Ohhh you pissy sonbitches, my kingdom for a GODDAMN CANDLE to BLAST you shadows APART with! What was I, your WHORE? Did I never have control to begin with? COME ON!

_Leave them frogs alone, Michel…._

I got no pride left!

_Michel, why you such a mean child? You're breaking mama's heart….Can't you control yourself, boy? Put it down, you hurtin' it!_

SOMEONE HELP ME OUT! SOMEONE HELP ME OUT AND I'LL CAST NO MORE SHADOWS! EVER!

_You make your mama wanna leave. Why you so mean, Michel? What'll you do when everyone leaves, boy?_

I'LL PAY MY DEBTS. Just give me back my tarot cards and my feathered hat, and HELP!

I'll cast no shadow. It's all too dark to see already. Too dark to see a thing.

The joke's on me.


	2. Nothing Left

**Cast No Shadow**

**Chapter 2**

Dr. Facilier and all characters of The Princess and the Frog © Walt Disney Studios. "Little Girl" (she will have a "name" soon) © me, use only with permission.

A few things right up front, please:

One, I am NOT a Voodoo practitioner, nor a practitioner of occult activities such as Tarot, Hoodoo, or the similarly-inclined. Thus while I have researched Facilier's chosen religion to the best of my ability, I make no pretense of being an expert who can flawlessly depict the rituals of the belief system. Please limit critique of my portrayal thereof to a REASONABLE extent. I would rather you expend more time critiquing my portrayal of character, plot, etc. On that note, neither am I a Louisiana resident from the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression. But as a historian by profession, I should hope I do some justice to the zeitgeist of New Orleans ca. mid-1930's.

Two, BE AWARE: this is technically a second-chance/villain redemption story. While I have NO intentions of ever making Facilier a candidate for heroism and uniformly moral behavior, the entire purpose of this story is to have him slowly reevaluate his personal outlook and methodology of living. In terms of literary tropes, you will see Facilier becoming an "anti-hero" via meeting an OC of mine who is a "morality pet." Some people are open-minded to the evolution of a character, but others are fond of the character as portrayed in official content, and find this sort of project offensive. If you are one such person, DO NOT BOTHER TO READ THIS STORY ANY FURTHER. Now that I have provided this disclaimer, I will DISREGARD ALL FLAMES that object to precisely this sort of writing. You WERE forewarned.

Three, the POV from here on out is third person omniscient.

Four, please enjoy!

* * *

In all his life—and he had been to some pretty tattered, hellish places—he had never heard so much wailing. Such truly godforsaken despair. Not even the kind he himself had caused. It was terror. Loss. Hope cast overboard of a boat that could not be bailed. Desolation.

The hysterical, raw shrieks that had filled his ears for forever and only seconds—endlessly, "I'll pay y'all back, I PROMISE!" –subsided abruptly, on a final keen, the words and implications and intended listener behind them new, of "I'LL CAST NO MORE SHADOWS! EVER!"

And all surrendered to grave silence.

He realized the screaming had come from his own burning, barb-wire stinging throat. He wondered how long he had been pathetically pleading any power with any mercy to save him, without knowing it.

Darkness.

And then, like the nauseating disorientation of reviving from swooning and parched under an unforgiving hot sun….yet so much dimmer….the man named Michel, who called himself Doctor Facilier, opened bleary amethyst eyes to what he expected would be his afterlife.

It wasn't.

It was the same damned cemetery in which he'd met his demise.

The same damned cemetery in which that little righteous bitch, the kink in his plans to royally swindle the LeBoeuf fortune, had snatched his blood-drinking Voodoo fetish and…

And….Neon lights and shimmying razor wooden fanged masks and…

The heat subsided and Facilier convulsed with shivers. His long praying mantis fingers clutched at his chest. He looked down; it was difficult to focus, but he was fairly certain all of the shredded, sliced, and red-brown stained portions of his vest, coat, coattails, slacks and dance shoes meant he was severely injured. The tingling in his extremities also suggested this eclipse of fortune.

Spectacular. And not a dime on his person for the hospital. Not to mention half the staff of any hospital in New Orleans probably had a score to settle with him. Heh. Maybe he was going to die after all.

But as he lay there in the grass only six or so feet elevated above the rectangular, worm-populated, earthen nook where he should be resting, a peculiar phenomenon ensued. His wounds were slowly closing. Even the stains they had caused vanished. Every pore felt simultaneously seared and frozen.

It was like a get out of jail free card. Such unaccountable luck that his head reeled still further.

And his quicksilver mind was now tarnished. It could not make sense of why or how his soul had been spared from such massive supernatural debt.

That was when Michel Facilier realized there was still warmth in the world back to which hell had vomited him.

Warm air breathing down on his forehead.

The sweet scent of talcum powder and fresh earth filled his nostrils….which abruptly flared as his eyes finally focused upward.

A pair of root beer hued eyes gazed down into his face.

The Voodoo doctor screamed: or tried to, for only a hoarse, grating rasp came out. Long, slender, elastic limbs struck out impotently at his assailant. The back of one of his hands made frail contact with flesh. It was enough to make a surprisingly small body scramble back and away from him.

Something the material of stiff felt brushed his arm, lightly landing against him. He seized at it and gawked.

It was his hat.

Without the perky magenta feather.

The witch doctor rolled onto his side, curled into a suspicious fetal ball, and scowled into the shadows that had once been his allies. "God _punishes_ thieves," he growled. "Git _back_ here!" The multifarious ironies of his remark were not lost on him, but he expected at least to intimidate whatever adversary was already picking at his presumed dead body like some rat or vulture.

Oh yes, a formidable adversary indeed: Hiding behind the crumbled ruins of a tombstone was a small child. A girl, who could not be more than six or seven years old.

She peeked her handkerchief-draped head out from around a particularly large chunk of stone, into which the letters "F-A-C-I" were carved. It didn't take Facilier long to contract goosebumps and wager whose tombstone the child used as a protective fortress.

Well hell, who did that make him, Jesus Christ? Not likely. Even a smug bastard like Facilier knew he never had and never would deserve the status of godly martyr. But apparently returning from the afterlife was always a bit of a hoo-ha. And he still had no idea WHY. So, ever the ruthless survivalist, the Shadowman decided to focus on the juvenile interloper instead of his own dubious fate.

"I said come _back_ here," he croaked, attempting with the remaining shreds of his internal balance to measure his tone. "_Now_, missy. You have something that's mine."

A small caramel-hued hand shot out from behind the chunk of gravestone. The feather shuddered, half-crushed, in the fist attached to it. The child waved the small bright-hued thing in her hand as if it were a white flag and she were a Great War colonel on Kaiser Wilhelm's side.

_Spectacular. My powers, my dignity, and now my hat. All crushed. Goddamn rotten kid._

"Girly, I can't get up. I'm hurt. Bring it over and I'll play you a right neat trick, deal?" The Voodoo doctor crooned sweetly through his teeth.

He rummaged around in his pockets and pulled out the contents: somewhat brimstone-seasoned pieces of his Voodoo blood-carrying vessel, a small wooden facsimile of a Central African mask…and his Tarot cards.

Good. Fine. He could entice the little brat over with parlor tricks that did not rely on the dark magics of which he was now bereft. And maybe he could get her to go fetch him some food and water while she was at it. And some antiseptic, and other things she could grab from Woolworth's for a quarter or two.

"Really. I can play some card tricks for ya. Ever had your palm read? Tarot? Fortune told? C'mon, sugar. Lend a poor sinner some help here."

A round face—worn but pretty—peered out alongside the little arm. Full lips, small pug nose dusted with three prominent freckles, high-set full eyebrows, large dark inquisitive eyes, and short poorly-crimped frizzy black hair sprouting out from under her plaid handkerchief head-wrap greeted Facilier. The girl scowled, gazed downward and rubbed her cheek. It was red.

_Oh. Oops. Heh. _

"Look, cherie, I'm sorry. You startled me, a'right? I been to a really inhospitable place the past…I dunno HOW long….and I'm mighty wounded. I didn't know WHO was hangin' over me starin' at my face, y'know? Didn't mean to strike ya."

Those root-beer eyes squinted into Facilier's face. Then at last the child stood and made her way over on pigeon-toes. She wore faded Mary Janes and a Robin's Egg blue pleated dress that reached down to her scrawny knees. She took great care, as she walked around bits of tombstone, to tug that dress down so that no thigh showed—Facilier could only assume she was exceedingly modest. A set of gaudy, cheap chartreuse and magenta Mardi Gras beads—the same magenta as Facilier's feather—swung around her neck and down past her navel.

With a most wistful sigh, the seven-year-old flung herself down onto her rump next to the witch doctor. She handed over the feather, and nodded at him to make good on his promise.

"Ahah, right. Hey there." Facilier tried, and still found himself unable, to sit up. "Oookay. Fair warning: This'll be a humble performance."

He flourished the cards across the fingers of his hands, despite his weariness, with the fluid, stealthy efficiency of sand through the narrow eye of an hourglass. He lay the set out on his own stomach, inhaled and exhaled deeply, and stared with empty eyes, extinguished of hope, at the gaping black expanse of a starless night. A balmy breeze from an approaching storm stirred his hair and the hair of his unlikely companion.

"Pick three," he rasped, tapping the cards and the child's knee. He laughed then, softly and bitterly, at the echo of his past grandiosity in his own mind. "Juuust three," he chortled, the bridge of his nose curling in a snarl. The memory of the hundreds of people he had scammed with his theatrical, quick-tongued charms, with such graceful ease, mocked him. Even the crickets—and frogs—whistling and croaking in the distance beyond the graveyard seemed derisive right now.

There were fireflies dotting the sky between the witch doctor and the stars that he could not see.

He wasn't sure why…he couldn't remember much about his last hours aside the beginning of the seemingly ceaseless physical and mental torment by his…supernatural tax collectors…but something about seeing those fireflies made him both squeamish and ….sad?

No. It wasn't sad. It was an alien feeling. Loss? Embarrassment?

Nope. Something keener and more private.

…guilt?

_Nah. Why the damn hell would bugs with shiny asses make me—_

And then the little girl pinched his nose. Hard.

Facilier's glowering gaze shifted slowly to the left, where the child knelt next to him, her two tiny front fingers firmly grasping closed his nostrils. His nose was under siege.

It was profoundly annoying.

"The hell are you _doin_'?" Facilier snapped, rather savagely, his whole narrow face twisting in a snarl.

In a very nasal voice. Hilariously nasal. Honking.

The girl giggled. It was the sound of souls being saved, bubbling buoyantly to heaven en masse.

It was startling and beautiful. It made the Doctor's breath hitch.

And then he laughed too: softly, almost experimentally, as if too much riotous mirth would earn him more lightning bolts from on high and lashings from down below. "Well gee whiz, that was…abrupt, little missy." He blinked, trying to salvage the (he thought) righteous rage that he had felt moments ago. Impotently.

_Oh well_…_Hell with it._

"Pick your cards. Heh, you ain't much of a talker, are ya? HA. Ha ha HAAA. I never stop yakking. We'll get along just fine, I suspect."

For whatever reason, this proclamation made the child happier still. She clapped her hands and nodded fervently. She yanked three cards off the deck on his makeshift table-belly so ardently that the entire rest of the deck spilled off onto the stones and grass. She hugged these three treasures to her breast and again dreamily sighed.

Facilier suddenly got a vivid vision of himself as a mallard duck with a plaintively quacking yellow, billed fuzz waddling after him.

_Uh…huh. Check, please. _

He crossed his legs and busied himself snatching back the cards. "Right so, let me, ahm. Interpret. Scootch a bit closer. And then maybe you can do me a favor." He flurried the three cards across each finger of both hands and then presented them face up to the child. "One is your past. Two is your present. Three is your future. It's…more complicated than that, but seeing as you've gotta be shy of eight years old, we'll keep it simple."

The Voodoo doctor pulled the first card. "Your past is the…." He pulled his face out of an expression of slack shock as fast as possible. "…The, ah, Hanged Man…." _The card of great sacrifice in obtaining a higher plane of wisdom. The card of looking at things in a different way. The card of great pains taken toward these ends. _"Had a hard time of it, have ya?"

The child shook her head, suddenly and fiercely. She yanked so hard on her dress, in an attempt to make certain her thighs and knees were covered, that one of her dress pleats tore.

"Easy, cherie. I got no interest _whatsoever_ in gawkin' at your legs_." I like 'em older and a whole lot...fuller. _Facilier shuffled the Hanged Man back into the deck. He was only glad he hadn't pulled The Devil or Death. That'd've spooked her twice as much. Heh. Actually, it could have been funny. He wasn't sure why he was glad he hadn't. Oh well.

He pulled the second card from the girl's clutches, and twirled it in his fingers until her eyes roamed back toward his face.

"Now that's more like it. Your present is The Empress. Means creation. Birth. Harmony. Motherhood…hoho…ah, let's hope that ain't something you'd be worrying about for a while…" He paused to doff his hat and cast the child a quizzical look from under the brim, which extracted another giggle from her. "But you don't gotta be a mama for real, to be a little old mama-LIKE lady. I'm talkin' unconditional love. You're just the type of little lady who's gentle and gracious. All sugar, all hugs. Y'all love everyone you come across."

_And that certainly explains why you're squatting next to a beaten-up witch doctor after nightfall in a graveyard getting a Tarot reading any deadbeat on the street corner could give you…. Damn it, damn it. When did I become so ordinary? Just ain't fair…._

Facilier sighed and pulled the child's final card. "Your future is The Star. Heeey, lovely. Means a right nice person, or thing, or lesson, is gonna guide you toward happiness. Not my thing really. I like the dark. But hey, takes all kinds. Not bad, little miss. You're an Empress with a Star guiding her. Now." Facilier fished around in his pockets, moving around bits of Voodoo talisman. "Huh, one sec, one sec. Ah. Okay. Maybe I can give you this quarter to go buy me some things I need. How's that for a deal?"

The Shadowman put the quarter down in front of the child and shuffled his deck as he spoke. But he only got halfway through doing so before the little girl let out a loud frustrated squeak and plunged her hand into his deck. She yanked out a single card, and hugged it to her breast possessively. It was half crushed, like his feather, by her frantic fervent force.

His cards.

His Tarot cards.

All he had left that vaguely resembled an ally in this world.

Cards he had owned longer than he had been a Voodoo doctor.

All he had.

Something in Facilier tightened and loudly, like a livewire, snapped. Driven on adrenaline, he shot like a rocket to his feet. He thrust out a hand. "_Give that back_," he snarled, eyes wide, pale, and crazed.

The child backed away deftly, tripping on neither bits of his tombstone nor clumps of grass. Her eyes were wide, darkened by fearfully dilating pupils. She shook her head.

"HEY. LISTEN, darlin'. Them cards is all I got left of something I had and loved. I need 'em ALL or they don't work."

_Michel, Michel, stop tormentin' the frogs…._

…_What…? _

Facilier shook his head sharply, wiping cold beads of sweat off his forehead, dragging his mind back from the madly ringing well into which it had been plunged for his time in purgatory. "Juss_sst_…gimme back that card."

The girl continued to back away. And then she whirled and propelled into an air-footed sprint down the nearest alley.

"DAMMIT! It's MINE! GIVE IT! I, I…I have ways to HURT you!"

_No you don't, Facilier. You can't hurt anyone now. You just powerless. POWERLESS._ _God damn it, GOD DAMN IT!_

"I HAVE WAYS TO HURT YOU!" The witch doctor shrieked again, an impotent, half-hysterical bluff of an ultimatum, as the thief's blue-clad skinny form became a smaller dot down the street. A cruel verbal knife tossed at a strangely compassionate child, a gesture that could benefit no one, not even himself.

He attempted pursuit. He got three steps before his knees gave way and he crashed face first into the grass. Sprawled across his own tombstone. Sharp slabs of unforgiving stone jabbed into his ribs and jostled his joints. He stood, sputtering a whole recipe of expletives, and made to berate the child and demand his property once more.

She was gone.

Facilier let out a strangled growl and kicked a particularly descriptive chunk of tombstone. The only result was an injured toe, which he shook frantically, hopping around like a drunk crane.

He exhaled, cleansing his faculties, and rummaged through his now incomplete deck of cards. The card missing was The Empress.

"Tuh." The witch doctor smacked both palms over throbbing temples. "Well, fine. Just…_dandy_. That's right, Doc. _Fun fact_ about returning from the grave: Fate's got a twisted sense of humor, so she sends a damn kid to screw ya within minutes of your resuscitation. Alright. Splendid, thanks a _lot_."

_Time to go home._

The process of walking took a moment to recollect. One weary toothpick leg up, down. The other up, down. He experimented with humming. A ragtime melody came to his head and he huskily trilled it out.

His feet found their way to the alley behind the little daytime café called Duke's. Strange thing was, the place was empty and boarded up.

Facilier hardly registered the peculiar incongruity. It explained why, also, he didn't notice the distinctly more compact, generic, and drab quality of the Fords parked all up and down the street.

He stumbled his way down the familiar alley….

And came to a dead halt.

There, where his Voodoo Emporium, a purple-walled brick affair with wooden greenlit torches and hand-painted African masks on its backdoor façade, was….a destroyed…debacle. A rubble heap.

It had been utterly torn down. "Danger," a faded sign erected right in the center of the rubble declared. "Hard hat eviction zone."

His last link to the world. His last link to certainty. To security.

Gone.

"No…" It came out a piteous wail at first. And then, an increasingly frenzied, animal roar. "No, no, NO _NO NO! WHAT? HOW?!_!" Facilier flew at the heap of destruction. He thrust great masses of drywall and brick to and fro, cutting and jarring himself frequently, searching in a blind panic for any of his remaining Voodoo effects. The poppets, the potions, the powders, the Ouija, the occult insignia, the masks, and most importantly at that particular moment, his locked skull-emblemed chest full of money—were all gone, buried, hopelessly in what looked like a dynamite-imploded job of erasure. HIS erasure. Facilier thundered a final mangled "NO" at the starless sky and writhed over to the tree that marked the courtyard of his emporium. He rushed at it punching and clawing, vengefully jealously desperate to rid any life yet remaining in the vicinity.

The dead stalk which was once barren all through the year, now, was a flourishing magnolia tree. It was like its vivacious, thriving state in his absence was a contemptuous mockery of the Voodoo doctor. And all that he achieved in punching its trunk was scratched up fists and a whole lot of magnolias in his disheveled ebony hair.

Facilier, temper utterly spent, then simply stepped back from the tree, walked out of the rubble, and proceeded down the streets of the French Quarter, straight out onto Main. There was nothing left to salvage from the wreckage now.

He was homeless, friendless, and broke.

It was late dinner hour, eight or so, just past twilight, and people burst out of the windows of restaurants, jazz bars, and pontoon rafts passing on the river like cotton and silk clad, pearl-decked bugs in a brightly, warmly lit ant farm. A whole lot of them, especially the men, were obviously drunk, which was mighty strange considering Prohibition had never been more severe, even in the Crescent City. The whole thing, and Facilier's insistent solitude even in the fray of it, rendered him three times as cold. He hugged himself, winced at the stitch in his ribs from falling on his own gravestone, and continued aimlessly trudging.

Gone was his fear of recrimination and vengeance from the hundreds he had hoodwinked. For no one seemed to have a clue: who was that funny, tall, skinny, light-skinned negro whose attire mixed Fred Astaire and a jungle Pygmy?

After a few inebriated roars of laughter, and a couple gunshots which he had to dodge, and more Robert-E-Lee-worthy hoots and catcalls, and even a particularly nasty jazz player's trumpet-rendition of Taps, they ignored Facilier altogether.

After all, there were no more frogs for him to torment now, were there? Who needed to fear him? Who in all the world needed to even acknowledge and affirm his existence?

_Welcome back to a squalid Bayou backyard circa 1900, Michel_. _Welcome back to what you never did really escape. And to the first time you picked up a frog and broke its legs, and then poked out its eyes with a stick, and watched it hop around limply in terror and confusion before squashing it altogether, because you were pushed and shoved and pointed at and tortured first. _

_You got a squishy mess on your denim overalls and your poor abandoned mama looked at you like you were a heartless freak, screamed your Christian name, told you you were hurting God's creatures, and ran into your little creaky-boarded house and sobbed. _

_And that didn't stop you, did it? Hell no. You killed some more slimy little frogs, and tortured still more, because you and your mama were stuck and SOMEONE had to pay. And your mama had to look at her blue-eyed son who was obviously some kind of sadist. All she had. And she killed herself. _

_And you never did see past that, not even when Odie rescued you. Not even when you'd mastered Odie's magics. Not even when you'd twisted them into something a lot more risky, a lot less savory. Not even when you made your first swindles, and accrued your first mound of green bills, and traveled the world's river cities with them, and met the Devil in all his disguises. _

_So welcome back to the place you never left, Michel "Facilier." _

_Facilier. Comes from French, "facile." Means two different things. "Easy" in the pejorative sense. Easy, lazy, simply done, sneaking "achievement," false "accomplishment." Dancing through life playing every pawn you meet. _

_Also, from Latin. "Facio." To make. Facilier. Crafter of lazy, two-faced achievements. Someone who thinks he can really live through life without lifting a finger in real, honest labor. Someone who befriends shadows and bids them cheat light. _

_Sucker. My name is Michel French-for-Sucker. _

_Now what? _

_NOW what?_

_I don't even have the Tarot cards my mama gave me. Because that damn kid….!_

Somewhere deep in the pit of his scrawny belly, the Doctor felt something akin to roiling horror at the fact that his eyes were itchy and moist. At the fact that the Shadowman was reduced to a weeping shellshocked hobo. And no profit to show the pointing naysayers that the humiliation and loss had been worth it.

"I need me a star," he murmured.

He kept going, skull-emblazoned top hat lopsided, coattails shredded, conspicuously limping, led like a person possessed by the very embodiment of Obsolescence, the very soul of Listlessness, until he walked—literally—into a brick wall.

He sniffed, whet his chapped, parched lips, walked around to the front of the building, and looked up.

"Works Progress Administration, local chapter offices," a sign in a crisp sans serif text read. "Job applications within. Government sponsored. Trust FDR and he'll trust you!"

_Jobs. JOBS. Right. Yes. Whoever the Sam Hill "FDR" is. Go inside, Michel. One foot in front of the other. You may be hot shit, but you still need to eat. _

The "WPA" office was a great barn of a single room, much like a post office, long and narrow, with enormous side walls boasting stiff but colorful murals that mostly lauded the salvation of a proletariat everyman in overalls industriously laboring away at a forge, or a factory assembly line, or in a cornfield, uncomplicatedly alongside men of every other race, class, and creed. Facilier snorted, deadpan, at the décor, and kept walking.

As he trod toward a single-file line leading up to a partition screen and a series of desks behind which tired men and women sat doling out paperwork, he passed a shiny, smooth radio, of a silver streamlined material he found unfamiliar. Typical radio was stacked and smooth and had a percolated board speaker…ah well. He shouldn't expect anything particularly complimentary about this place of dust-coated hope and abandoned pride.

He had gotten two steps past the chrome contraption when it blared out with Vaudeville flair, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The SHADOW knows…."

The witch doctor's head pivoted almost 360 degrees backward, like the head of a marionette pulled by abusive strings. For a moment he wondered if his mind had not yet fully stepped out of the waters of supernaturally-prone insanity.

Then half the assemblage of bedraggled, slump-shouldered unemployed people gave a flurry of gray applause, and Facilier realized he had not imagined what he heard.

After a moment the radio program ended, and a song called "Dancing in the Dark" crooned in its place, ushering in still more images of inky shuddering things and murky insecurities. The stuff that, before now, Facilier would have lustily laughed at and welcomed.

Facilier stepped into the back of the line, which moved with surprising efficiency, and messed around in his mind with his most recent post-resurrection observation like bits of warm wet clay in his hands. Just..what the _hell_? He could not recollect a radio drama ever having been broadcast about his sort of person recast as some vigilante hero. Damned thing had only been invented up North in '20, after all. And had he known about something that popular, he would have certainly capitalized upon it with his own manipulative, self-advertising parlor tricks.

_Huh_. But then again, someone _had_ ravaged his home while he was "dead." Evidently it didn't take long to turn the whole world against a single enduring sinner who had simply played the system to his advantage, same as any other man who had gumption and cleverness and—

An altercation exploded at the front desk. The fight was only a person or two in front of the witch doctor. Facilier arched a feisty pencil-thin black-Errol-Flynn-brow at the elephantine backside of the man causing the holdup.

"Izzat a FACT? Well, just coz Missus Princess Sugarplum _Tiana_ thinks I ain't punctual don't mean you can refuse me back my job at –"

"Mr. Duke!" The contender, a sallow female clerk behind the office desk, was a pale, horse-faced woman. Her flaccid little hat and her thin, forcibly patient-set lips shook with repressed irritation. "You know _full well_ your record of offenses far exceeds lateness to the job! Baiting customers, groping waitresses, intimidating the owner's son, before her husband sent him to school in France—"

"Her HUSBAND, that's right! This's all a damn setup! This is America, fo' God's SAKE. You just in bed with that foreign king and his uppity wife! She used to work in MY kitchen you know! Duke's, ever heard of it?!"

_No,_ Facilier snidely mused. _She would NEVER in a million lifetimes guess a man named DUKE owned a place called DUKE'S. It would be a massive, inconceivable logical leap. _

_Lord. _

"I mean! If this ain't injustice, me not bein' fit to serve QUEEN COOK now just coz she married some butterscotch-skinned royal Frenchie!"

At last, Facilier couldn't repress a snort. "Hoo-whee. The grapes ain't so fresh 'round here," he muttered. He removed and eyed his hat, fingering the skull pattern and the tatty magenta feather that had so recently been held by that…strangely comforting duckling of a child.

At this audible slight, the thick-set jilted chef—and Facilier at least could not blame him for hating Naveen and Tiana, at the same time as he disdained a lazy brain wholly incapable of scheming and self-promotion—turned and rolled up the sleeves of a stained shirt. "Excuse ME, scrawny?"

"Well, fo' certain. You're excused, 'Duke.' " Facilier jerked his head saucily at his new adversary. He smiled, and the expression made full use of his sneering serpentine lips and the cheeky gap between his two front teeth.

The man called Duke stepped back. The sinister blackening of the air around Facilier was all but palpable. "Uhn…say, now…"

The witch doctor sniffed. "Mm-hm. Y'all mind hurrying along? _Some_ of us got noplace to go tonight and are in a bit of a rush."

"I don't wonder, the way _you_ dressed," the cantankerous man chortled. "With that froo froo top hat and them tiger claws hangin' round your neck! Betcha ain't _used_ to bein' out come daylight!"

"They're leopard _teeth_, not tiger claws." Facilier's blood pressure rapidly ascended. _Moron. Tigers and witch doctors don't come from the same place--_

"Tuh! Who cares? Whatchoo, some kinda _Voodoo man_?"

Facilier had cultivated a masterful pokerface long before he had reached the age Tiana was when he first attempted to hoodwink her. He launched that arsenal of supreme skill in deceit at the puny-minded man before him now. "My outfit ain't no concern of yours_, Jemima_. Finish your conversation with the lady here and step off."

"Oh, you sure about that? You sure you ain't got no secrets? Y'all know what happened to Marie Laveau, right? Got religion just before she died, but she woulda been someplace ELSE if she hadn't!"

"Look. I don't give a _rat's ass_ about 'Marie Laveau,' or 'Lala,' or all the other folk-tale charlatans in this here town. I don't even give a goddamn about the one's who're REAL." _Like Mama Odie._ _Especially since I can no longer partake of the magics she practices, and then some. _"Got it, old sport? I just wanna know what this 'Works Progress Administration' is and if it can give me a square job and some square meals to boot. Which accounts for why I am in this here line. You know, cause and effect?"

"Say, brother," the heavyset chocolate-skinned chef snorted. He cast a heavily implicative look at the woman behind the desk, and then turned back to Facilier. "The WPA's been snaggin' the righteous needy off the streets all year. The hell's WITH you? I _still_ say you's some kind of dingbat witch doctor."

Facilier returned a flat gaze, itching for a fat black poppet and a pointy needle to prove his sparring partner right. Mortally so. "And the year _is_?" he crooned acidly.

Suddenly horse-face-lady became imbecilic-blob's best buddy. He elbowed her through the protective metal cage separating her from the shifting, restless line of WPA hopefuls. "Is this guy for REAL? HA. BAHAHA! It's '35, mister. But you already knew that. Enough with the smart-aleck bull-shit! You ask me, the police oughtta be slappin' cuffs on YOUR hide."

Facilier had stopped listening. The room reeled, and he seized the rail to settle the rocking boat of the office. "Nineteen…thirty…_five_?"

Last time he checked, it was 1924.

1924.

_1924!_

"It's been…." His voice was faint under the roaring in his ears. "_Eleven years_…."

"Since _what_?" the jilted cook snapped.

But Facilier limped out of line and sank to his knees. Disorientation couldn't even begin to describe what coursed through his soul and made his head dizzy.

He didn't look, or feel, any older. His torturous period of limbo had, evidently, arrested his aging—just as death might have. But the rest of the world had gone on. Far. Leaving nothing familiar to which he could cling.

A void.

A man in the corner of the WPA office sat at a dusty piano used for WPA Performing Arts Sector auditions, and sang a song called "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

Facilier loudly groaned.

Something about his fetal crouch, knees to chest, and his hands tangled in his mass of dark hair, must have ignited maternal instincts in the old honky. She excused herself, stepped around her desk, and knelt to pat Facilier's shoulder.

He lurched away savagely, sucking in a great gasp of air.

"Mr….."

A pregnant pause.

"Michel," the witch doctor at last muttered. He had enough wits to realize he would condemn himself if he granted the woman his real name. A chill rushed up his spine at the memory of his mother and that odious Odie, the last two people ever to call him by his given name.

"Mr. Michel. I don't …really know what's troubling you, but…This…gentleman…has been denied his post at a restaurant and entertainment establishment called Tiana's Place."

_Oh my God. Ohhhh my God. Oh, POWERS. Oh. No. I do NOT deserve THIS. This is a hex plus karma times ten thousand curses to the fortieth power. No, ma'am. _

"Thank you kindly, but I know the joint _well_," Facilier seethed between clenched teeth. It wasn't exactly true, but he had known the joint's builders. Far too well. He gazed up into the face of the pitying governmental employee with staggering misplaced loathing, his own slender visage mangled and twisted with the bile.

It didn't register. "Well, grand! They need a new sous chef. Can you cook?"

"Oh, I can cook alright," Facilier chuckled bitterly. "Years of it. Several beats in Louisiana." He wasn't sure why, now, he was prattling so much. "Once in Paris. Montmartre. Great place, Montmartre….been to Haiti too once or twice, and Martinique…ho_, Jesus_…" He slapped his forehead against his palms. Repeatedly. And then wondered why he was invoking the name of a religious figure he'd shirked for decades.

The clerk seemed impervious to his woe. "Wonderful, sir. The Works Progress Administration of Louisiana would be glad to offer you a job at Tiana's Place. I'll process your papers, and call ahead to the proprietress. She'll be SO glad to have you."

A strange sound of mirth, soft of like the sound of some exotic dying fowl, escaped Facilier's lips. "_That,_ ma'am, is debatable…"

"Oh, not at ALL, young man, not at all! You seem perfectly delightful!"

_Hoho, boy. Flapjaw here had me more pegged than you, Vanilla. _

The scorned cook named Duke gave a final affronted huff and stomped out of the office, taking care to trample on one of Facilier's feet on the way.

The witch doctor grunted and flitted out of the way, cartwheeling to a standing position. He rubbed his injured toes. "Glad I could exterminate some pests in the process of obtaining gainful employment, cherie." He followed and tipped his hat at the woman who, titanic irony, thought she was being his Samaritan salvation.

The WPA clerk flipped through her immense card filer and pulled out the coveted phone number. "Perfect, here we are."

_Perfect. Right. _

_Hell. I can't do this. Not with Lil' Miss Froggie breathing down my neck. Not humiliated and bereaved of all my cleverness and might. Not disoriented by a lapse in time surpassing a decade. No. _

"Might I ask a question, cherie?" Facilier ventured, spurred by his roiling insides.

"You may, sir." The clerk was already swirling her finger around the pivoting circular dial.

"You mean to tell me you have…not a SINGLE other job that I can—"

"One moment. HELLO, there, Works Progress Administration local chapter calling. Good news. We have a Mr. Michel to replace the sous chef you fired. Oh, he's a DEAR. A little troubled, I think, based on his wardrobe…"

Facilier pursed his lips. _What the hell's so objectionable about my wardrobe? The bloodstains vanished, didn't they? People used to love this costume…love it….used to…_

"…but who isn't during this dreadful Depression? Oh, I know you understand. I've heard all about Tiana's Place, madam. I'm from the national offices but you can bet your bottom dollar, even when it's down and out like everyplace else, I've still heard of such an illustrious and charitable—oh yes. Yes, I'll send him over now. Mm hmm! Bye bye now!"

Facilier bumbled into a chair. The room was doing this terribly annoying thing where it spun like a merri-go-round hitched up on Coca-Cola before the drink was rid of the illicit white powdery substance that gave it its title….

"Mr. Michel!"

For some reason she was staring at him. He blinked. _Oh. That's me_. "Mmm?"

"Here are your papers. I'll need a date of birth and list of former occupations, blood type, last place of residence, things like that filled out before you walk over. Say, what color are your eyes?"

He didn't answer.

"Ah, oh, well, anyhow! They're very arresting, unusual. Sort of like a purple almost!"

"Y'don't say."

"Indeed, indeed! So! You know the way there, right? Just down the street, in what they, ah, call the Quarter?"

"Oh, yes. IIII do indeed." Facilier took the folder with his ticket to desperate measures and swiveled around in the office chair which he had commandeered. "Hhhha," he bleated again. "Seems my punishment's just _begun_."


	3. Job Interview

**Cast No Shadow**

**Chapter 3**

_Dr. Facilier and all characters of The Princess and the Frog © Walt Disney Studios. "E" © me, use only with permission._

_Two things right up front, please:_

_One, I am NOT a Voodoo practitioner, nor a practitioner of occult activities such as Tarot, Hoodoo, or the similarly-inclined. Thus while I have researched Facilier's chosen religion to the best of my ability, I make no pretense of being an expert who can flawlessly depict the rituals of the belief system. Please limit critique of my portrayal thereof to a REASONABLE extent. I would rather you expend more time critiquing my portrayal of character, plot, etc. On that note, neither am I a Louisiana resident from the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression. But as a historian by profession, I should hope I do some justice to the zeitgeist of New Orleans ca. mid-1930's._

_Two, BE AWARE: this is technically a second-chance/villain redemption story. While I have NO intentions of ever making Facilier a candidate for heroism and uniformly moral behavior, the entire purpose of this story is to have him slowly reevaluate his personal outlook and methodology of living. In terms of literary tropes, you will see Facilier becoming an "anti-hero" via meeting an OC of mine who is a "morality pet." Some people are open-minded to the evolution of a character, but others are fond of the character as portrayed in official content, and find this sort of project offensive. If you are one such person, DO NOT BOTHER TO READ THIS STORY ANY FURTHER. Now that I have provided this disclaimer, I will DISREGARD ALL FLAMES that object to precisely this sort of writing. You WERE forewarned._

_Please enjoy!_

The Den of Beezelbub, otherwise known as Tiana's Place, was a soaring two-level Colonial mansion flanked by water, once a sugar mill, but its roots showed not one bit as Dr. Facilier trudged up to its radiant façade.

A fluid green neon script elegantly declared to him where he was, as if he needed the reminder. The place was an intricate array of Art Nouveau and Art Deco charms, in the form of glowing yellow-lit arched windows. A towering mansard finial soared toward the (still starless) New Orleans sky braced by palm trees and engaged white columns. Facilier could make out a chandelier through the foyer window.

_Oh dear God. _

He took in a deep breath of balmy evening air and stepped inside, following an irritatingly happy laughing couple whose carefree quality made his weights feel twice as heavy. Facilier considered picking one of their pockets, but then remembered he had no Shadow to do the trick on his behalf. Thus he shoved his hands in his pockets and proceeded to slip around them and disregard the gentleman at the reservations desk with surly resolve. "I'm the new guy," he tossed over his shoulder, not bothering to doff his tophat.

He had once magically manufactured the restaurant as Tiana had dreamt it to be, in order to try and convince her to return his Voodoo blood talisman. He had given creative flair to the accuracy of her vision.

Even so, Facilier had vastly underestimated what Tiana's will could produce.

Jazz music blasted forth into the festive air of the restaurant. A full brass and woodwind band performed on the stage at the end of a long nave-like stretch of tables. In the center of the blue, sky-like ceiling was the sparkling champagne-hued chandelier that had beckoned the Shadowman inside.

God. He loved champagne. It was his favorite.

For higher-paying customers, there were continuous cloister-like opera-box bilevels of private tables, each with its own spherical electrical light. To the back left of the stage was the door to the kitchens, and past it a nondescript stairwell.

Despite the opulence of the place, there was a strain to it: only half the tables at best were filled, and none of the private booths. Many of the lights were turned off. Cobwebs gathered as subtle signs of disrepair on chairs that were empty.

So even Tiana's grand dream was susceptible to the vicissitudes of the American one.

Despite signs of a level playing field, Facilier's heart thundered in his ears. He had always been bold, confident in his competence and talent, and excited by the capacity to snake into a risky situation and wiggle back out of it without a single scratch. But now, with no Voodoo powers, no command of people's wills and limited insight into their deepest desires, he was no longer the brash puppeteer that he had been. He was on enemy territory with an unloaded gun. And it was both degrading and terrifying.

And on that note of rampant performance anxiety, a queasily familiar slick-cut sunbaked tan male form was weaving its way toward him between tables full of laughing socialites and drab downtrodden alike.

Facilier was not ready for Naveen. He would rather face Tiana first. The daughter of the same humble, grounded backwater roots as himself. The person who would aim fiery moral sermons at him and lapse into wonderfully familiar poor grammar from time to time and probably smack him good across the face. Not the vapid shallow happy-go-lucky pretensions of Little Boy Silver Spoon. Not now. Facilier would rather be spat upon by Tiana than bought a drink by Naveen.

"Get away," he snarled, as the tall wiry European monarch approached. "Not _you_, damn it all. I ain't ready." He even held up a hand, palm outstretched, to fend off the grinning ass.

"I'm sorry," replied a voice much deeper and softer than Facilier remembered of his favorite frog prince. "Do we know each other? I thought you were the fellow they sent over to replace my sister-in-law's sous chef."

_Sister-in-law?_

Facilier's hand drooped to his side. He got a sharper look at the young man before him. Very young. Shy of twenty. Taller and slenderer than Naveen. Longer hair. Otherwise, his doppleganger. "Oh Powers," he uttered. "Don't y'all tell me Prince Naveen had a brother."

"Precisely!" the boy declared. "I am Prince Arshad. Of Malledonia!" He clapped Facilier heartily on the back.

"HAH, haha," the witch doctor chortled, suppressing the urge to let that laugh descend into hysterical giggling, as well as the urge to crack an inside joke with himself and ask Arshad if he wanted his palm read. "Y'all have not a _clue_ who I am, do ya?"

"You are the new sous chef. And you look tired and sincerely humble. That is good enough for me, sir." The boy, Arshad, only warmly smiled. There was something twinkling in his sunflower-hued gaze. Something that almost made Facilier ask if he was being serious, or if he knew more. Something that also brought to mind horses which were gifts, and mouths. Something like that. He couldn't rightly recollect the whole adage.

"Hohoho my." Facilier settled with rubbing his temples. "Strum me a ukulele."

"Well, I don't know, good sir." Arshad draped an arm around the weary Voodoo man's shoulders and began to escort him toward a stairwell in the very back of the restaurant, by the kitchens and exit, with an electrical sign that read Employees Only. "I am going to take you to your living quarters, they are on the second floor and lead out to a balcony that overlooks the river. Anyway, no, the tiny guitar, that is my brother's territory. I am more for piano. And saxophone, and dancing, when my parents are not visiting. They do not approve of antics, you see. They are, how you put it, very 'Old World.' They shipped me to the States for a few months because my sister-in-law's restaurant is in financial trouble. Depression and all. Ashidanza, 1929, it was a bad year for your country, hein? And I am here also because my nephew no longer needs my guidance getting through the European private school system, and because my sister-in-law's best friend Miss Charlotte LeBoeuff is very pretty and has been telling me since I was six and a half years old that she will marry me—"

"Yeah, that's, that's fascinatin', Prince Arshad." _Well, his voice is less grating, but he babbles just like his brother_. "But I've had a bit of an upsettin' day, y'see—"

"Oh that is too bad. I am so sorry, Mr. Michel. You are so colorfully clad, I would never have imagined you the sort to be down and out."

"Eryeah. Thank you kindly." _Huh. At least he has taste_. "So I need to speak to the lady manager before I get settled in up yonder. There's some…preexisting history between her and me that might be a bit of a problem with respect to my new position."

"I do not believe that there will be a problem!" Arshad declared in a tone of inexplicable radiance that Facilier was beginning to believe was a rather unsettling, but also soothing, quality of the kid's character.

"I do." A new voice. Female. Thin, tight, and tremulous with shock and rage.

Facilier and his new and considerably unlikely friend turned in unison to face the woman whom the witch doctor had swindled, bereaved of dear friends, mocked, and nearly killed.

Brandishing a guest roster and a meat cleaver in arms crossed over her chest like some femme warrior pharaoh, clad in a knee-length yellow dress which certainly wasn't her ice-white befurred befeathered flapper dress of dreams, but which burned like a vengeful sun…was none other than Mrs. Froggy Princess.

And whoa there. That was one glistening sharp meat cleaver.

Facilier gulped.

"Git. OUT. _Whoever_ you are. This is NO joke. How dare you. Who do you think you MESSIN' with? The man you're impersonating is dead. DEAD! An' he HAS been for YEARS! I SAW to it."

The Shadowman regained his indignant arrogance. "Never assume, Tiana, sweetheart," he bristled. "Makes an ass of u and me. Much to your chagrin, baby doll, my heart's still pumpin', and accordin' to your little Dubbya Pee Ay, I can cook food in yonder kitchen." He jerked his head at the back of the swanky joint.

"Well you're _fired_, Shadowman," she retorted, eyes glinting with tears of fury. And then she blinked back evidence of being emotionally jostled, stepped forward, and delivered the wrathful slap across the mouth that Facilier had been expecting. "And _don't you call me babydoll_."

On the stage, the jazz musicians ceased their playing to gawk with the rest of the restaurant.

"Est-ce que je dois prendre Naveen?" Arshad, stepping away from the both of them with a gliding gesture, calmly queried into the electrical still that fell between the witch doctor and princess.

Facilier rubbed his injured lip and cheek. "Je parle le francais aussi," he contemptuously drawled. "Prenez votre cher frère Naveen, I don't give a rat's ass."

"Yeah. You just might wanna go get him," Tiana forced through her teeth, and Arshad retreated an unknown direction; unknown because the witch doctor kept his eyes imperiously trained on Tiana's somewhat Amazonian form.

His tongue poked cheekily through the gap in his teeth, followed closely by a darkly appreciative whistle. "Oho, y'all learned the real language of the Crescent City, didja, babyd—" And then he bit his tongue.

Because Tiana's cleaver had found its way to the tip of his crotch.

"Easy now," he entreated, hands raised and voice immediately vaulting two octaves.

"Back yourself _out_ of this restaurant _now_," she hissed, eyes caustically ablaze.

"I got nowhere to go, darlin,'," he retorted, backing, instead, up the stairs to the loft that Arshad had indicated moments earlier.

"You're a resourceful man. You'll find a cardboard box or a rock, or a shelter. Scores of men _thousands_ of times better'n YOU have."

"Tiana. Eleven years have passed." By now Facilier was halfway up the stairs. He oiled his rusty persuasion joints to appeal to the proprietress's compassionate instincts.

"Eleven years I was asleep in hell, and it just spat me back up tonight, and I haven't a _clue_ why nor HALF a clue how to begin makin' my way among strangers."

In the back of his mind, however, it occurred to him that climbing to the highest level of a hostile zone with no escape and the enemy aiming a very pointy thing at his manhood was probably not his most brilliant of strategies.

"Well _cry me a river_," Tiana thundered.

_Allllrighty. That was a spectacular failure_.

His lips pursed sourly. "Thanks for caring. By the way, cherie, everyone's lookin'."

"_Let 'em look_. They're loyal customers. They'll be about as pleased to see you as Louis would be to see those gator teeth round your neck, once I tell 'em who and what you are."

"They're leopard fangs," he lied about the exoticism of his attire for the second time that night. "…Who's Louis?"

_Keep her talking. She'll soften._ _Right, yeah. Hooray for being quixotic! Allons-y!_

"The trumpeting bayou alligator who was _Ray's_ friend," Tiana seethed.

_Aw damn and hellfire_….

"And who is Ray?" He already had an inkling. Hence the mental eruption of expletives.

"The beautiful soul you smashed under your shoe."

Yeah damn. That was what he was afraid of.

Facilier winced. "The, ah, shadow-bustin' firefly?"

Fireflies. He had felt a funny rare weird stirring in his chest when he saw those, earlier that evening. A feeling he'd not felt since his mother was alive. A feeling only that insufferable little girl had been able to assuage.

Facilier tripped and landed hard on his rump on the second to last step to the loft. Tiana's cleaver was aimed at his heart now.

_Shit._

"Yes, _him_. He was _so _much more than that, Shadowman. He was good and kind and he probably woulda been the FIRST person to FORGIVE you, but guess what, thanks to YOU, he ain't here. So since you wouldn't just GIT, I'm lockin' you up here and calling the police!"

"And tell 'em _what_, puddin'?" Facilier, now cornered, began sinking into a viciousness bred of panic. "That a dead man who was always a myth in this city to begin with got sent down from a government job office to hauntcha? Usin' _magic_?"

He stood and leaned into the cleaver, with a coldly livid smile.

"_You can't do it_," he continued. His pupils dilated like a shark's at scent of blood. "You didn't even mean to kill me the _first_ time."

" 'Don't assume anything,'" she flung his quip back at him, steely. The cleaver slid down and pressed against Facilier's exposed belly.

"Then let me ask a question before I do." Suddenly in a flash of palpitating manic clarity, Facilier realized something crucial. He wondered if he still smelled of magnolias and dry wall rubble. "Was it you?" he hissed. "Did YOU have my emporium torn down?"

"_Someone_ had to take out the trash." The knife twisted slightly, paper-cutting a sliver of blood out of Facilier's midriff.

He didn't blink. "Well then, I think you've paid me back in FULL, you little bitch. Y'all robbed me of everything that mattered to me, just like I tried to use you, an' now I'm adrift in a world that I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. _Comprenez-vous_? C'mon now, poppet. I can still look deep into any heart. I know you. So what'll you tell the police, Cinderella? What're the repercussions of demolishing the home of a body who's ALIVE and ABLE to give or WITHDRAW consent? HM?"

"Your grave—"

"Is totally destroyed. You ain't got NO proof I was EVER dead."

Tiana was finally rendered mute.

_Oho, that's right, little girl. That's right. That's what you get._

"Magnifique. Now get me a bandaid, princess." Facilier pointed at the cut across his belly button, and rested his hands on his hips with a triumphant leer.

But his victory was short-lived. A pair of lean iron arms wrapped around his injured torso and heaved him bodily into the loft. Facilier struck out with a startled cry but found himself pinioned, arms twisted behind his back, against a dusty wooden floor.

He thrashed around and took in the room: empty and plain, with about half a dozen cots, some occupied by other men, otherwise homeless by the look of their patchwork attire.

Arshad sat on one of the beds looking apologetic.

Then Facilier heard the voice of his assailant in his ear. "We'll think of something to tell the law." A high thickly accented tenor. The scent of too much cologne. A lot more gravitas and strain than Facilier remembered of Prince Naveen of Malledonia. But then it had been eleven years, and well, Naveen wasn't exactly his bosom buddy. "Do not you worry, old _friend_."

"Darnit, boy, your breath smells like I don't KNOW what, but ain't nothin' like your flowery perfume," Facilier harshly jested, unwilling to submit. Seemed like ever since he'd come back from the dead, his willingness to suck up and kiss ass had been severely impaired. He waved a hand in front of his wrinkled nose to up the Ante of Cheeky Smartass a little more.

"Ha, well! Sniff away! And get comfortable down there, Dr. Facilier," Naveen declared. "I am keeping you thus until Tiana calls the tops."

"_Cops_, Naveen," Arshad corrected his brother's stilted use of American slang. He was obviously trying not to smile, and he coughed to conceal a snorting laugh. Then he rolled his golden eyes toward a pair of heels that strode past Facilier's ground-level line of vision. "Tiana…"

"Don't start, Arshad. Y'all too sweet for your own good," Tiana cut him off. "Unfortunately, Naveen…there's nothing we can do. Shadowman has a point, in his usual slimy way."

"HO, but 'it's not slime!'" Facilier parroted back a very old witticism at his antagonists. He brayed a rather mad laugh that roused half the sleeping employees in the loft. "'It's _mucus_!' HAHA. HAAAA. YES, sir! HAHAHAHA."

Huh. He sounded a little insane, didn't he?

Oh well. The loony bin was probably a warmer destination than this place.

His assailants collectively winced at his manic outburst. Then Arshad shrank away from a murderous look courtesy of Naveen. "What? You are sitting on him. That would make anyone a little distraught--"

"You knew who he was from the START," Naveen chastised. "You MUST have remembered from all the stories of how Tiana and I met! Shad-Shad! You can not be charitable to _every _little cockroach that scurries by! He is _dangerous_!"

"Just look at him, Navie," Arshad countered. "I know what he tried to do to you and Teenie. But. He's so pathetic."

"HEY, now, ahaha, this here cockroach ob-JECTS…" Facilier wiggled under his captor like a snake or slug, and freed a single arm. He reached for his skull-emblazoned tophat, which had spilled off his head at some point when Naveen lurched him into the loft. The elder prince moved to step on it—or Facilier's fingers—but Arshad picked it up and discretely placed it behind him on the cot he had claimed. The younger prince aimed his brother a gently reproachful stare. "See? Pathetic. And in no need of your help reaching that state more fully."

Naveen sighed. "Pathetic? My dear brother! Do you know what he is CAPABLE of?" He cast an agitated glance around the loft. "Where is that shadow? I bet he is fixing to make his shadow attack us! It can trip and kick people at the very least! That creepy shadow with a mind of its own!"

Facilier's delicate internal balance finally pitched decidedly in a bad direction.

"It's GONE, ya damn sonbitches!" he roared. He kicked his legs fiercely until Naveen sat on them. Foam formed at the corners of his mouth and he licked it back, embarrassed, trapped, and desolate. "My Shadow is GONE! GRAH! DAMN IT DAMN IT STOMP ON IT AND KILL IT DEAD, YOU PEOPLE ARE _IDJUTS_! I AIN'T _GOT NO POWERS NO MORE_!"

He remembered his mother again.

Her image came unbidden to his mind, in a loft being sat upon by a vindictive former acquaintance with a cut in his belly in 1935.

He remembered his mother telling him he, Michel, was actually born a twin.

That his brother was still-born.

That said brother had brown eyes.

That said brother probably would have been a kinder boy than he, and wouldn't have tortured frogs.

Or her heart, every time she looked at him.

He remembered Odie adopting him. He remembered the first day he turned Odie's magic into his own, and, hoping to prove his dead mama wrong and spit in Odie's face, made his Shadow sentient. And freed it to express the most selfishly hateful impulses in his own soul.

So he had a twin alright, and that twin was even eviler than he.

_Take that, mama, goddamn you. Goddamn you, because your Great Disappointment ain't the one who did the leavin'. Not in the end. _

"GERROFF ME!" he erupted again, arching his back like a recoiling serpent, and nearly bucking Naveen. "Y'ALL _SO PURE AN' CLEAN_ BUT YOU TORTURE YOUR ENEMIES IN AN ATTIC, WHERE NOBODY CAN SEE, HUH? GEROFF! I'LL GO_. I'LL GO_. JUS' QUIT! _MY POWERS ARE GONE_!"

Arshad shrugged as if to indicate that Facilier had just further confirmed his own claims.

"…_What_?" Tiana thinly gasped. For the second time Facilier roared that one crucial bit of knowledge, it registered.

"Y'ALL HEARD ME! I'M NOBODY NOBODY NOTHIN'! I'M JUST A GODDAMN SCRAWNY HOMELESS SINNER NOW! I'M!...I got NO way to hurt a SOUL! No power, NOTHIN'! I'm…god damn it! _GOD DAMN IT_!" Facilier's head slammed forward into a floorboard and he bit down on his tongue until he tasted blood. "Hell, hell, THIS is hell, not where I WAS, THIS is HELL." He felt hot moisture rolling down his jutting cheekbones again and, like an infant cold and aching and bound by helplessness, fresh out of the womb, wished to have never been reborn.

The still, lifeless mimicry of his shadow proved his words facts.

The room fell quiet; dishes clanging and music flowing had resumed uneasily downstairs. The roused kitchen attendants whose shifts were over, who wanted nothing more than rest, exchanged tired glances at this display of maudlin theatrics, and lay back down, shortly resuming their listless slumber.

Arshad whet his lips. "Tiana. Naveen. My name…means 'close to heaven'…and I would like to live up to that. I am pretty sure the both of you would like to as well. You can keep an eye on him best by keeping him under your employ, since you have no way of sending him to prison anyhow. You incarcerate him here, and what is better, you show kindness when it is most needed."

Naveen sighed and softly laughed. After a moment the sniveling Facilier felt the weight lifted off his back. The older prince walked over to his brother and ruffled his hair. "Arshad was a cleric or saint in another life, I think," he said.

"Hardly," the younger prince immediately countered, staring at his feet.

Tiana shook her head slowly. "Assuming this is all true…he can still _step on_ people without a lick of magic."

"Why the hell would I do _that_?" Facilier lifted his head and resentfully sniffed back further humiliating tears. "Jeopardize my _own_ needs by burnin' bridges here? I got no pride left. Just NEEDS."

Needs, not wants. Wants had become luxuries. Falsehoods.

Tiana gazed at the Voodoo master for a long moment. Then she rendered her verdict: "…Now _that_ I will take as gospel truth. Arshad?"

"Yes, Teenie?"

"You're about his size. Lend him some clothes. Looks like we got ourselves a sous chef." And without another word, she descended the stairs.

Naveen poked his brother's chest. "Be careful," he ordered, and then he followed Tiana.

Facilier dragged himself laboriously up onto his hands and knees. He groaned and touched his belly. The cut was superficial. Shallow. A bluff.

He knew Princess Ribbit couldn't do it. And boy oh boy was he going to capitalize on her soft-heartedness in the time to come.

The Voodoo master sneered twistedly to himself.

Until a nutmeg-hued hand clasped his own and helped him to his feet.

Prince Arshad. "Are you alright?"

"…Fine. Just. Dandy." Facilier took his hat from Arshad. He placed it on one of the cots. He looked for a long wary moment into the unsettlingly kind, accepting eyes of the person who had just, in numerous ways, advocated him. The two of them were almost the same looming height. "…Why are you really here in the States, boy?"

Arshad grinned, a dazzling white-toothed affair, removed his v-neck sweater and white button-up blouse, and finally the sleeveless cotton muscle shirt underneath it. He handed the shirt to the witch doctor. "Level with me. It's really 'Dr. Facilier,' yes?"

"Yessir, that is correct."

"Do you know the real reason why my parents cut off Naveen?"

Facilier pursed his lips. "Hah. Bein' a fiscal leech to his rich parents at age 20."

"That was only part of it. The other part concerned me."

"….Enlighten me."

"If you are still here tomorrow, I will." Arshad winked. "I'm heading to Naveen and Tiana's. Pardon me if I don't quite trust you enough yet to give you the address. That will come."

And the boy, who could not have been more than eighteen years old himself, descended from the loft.

An hour later, Michel Facilier was in the kitchen of Tiana's Place clearing space behind the stove and disregarding the gawking stares of his fellow kitchen employees. The spirit of industriousness had not quite yet bitten him in the ass. But he figured he might as well not give Miss Froggy more ammunition against him.

A sturdily curvaceous form blackened the doorway to the kitchen. She planted her feet in an ominous demi-sumo stance, and folded her arms across her chest. "Excuse me and the new sous chef," she informed the staff, which hustled out at once upon her urging. And then she "hmph"ed for good measure.

Facilier mentally girded his loins and turned, a look of smug menace on his face. He eyed Tiana keenly, his gaze like two hard cold amethyst jewels taking in the echoes of crow's feet around her large bright eyes and the peppering of gray in just the front strands of her now short-cropped thick black curls. She could only be in her thirties at this point, if he recalled correctly, and she was still, annoyingly, probably the prettiest woman he had ever beheld, but the passing of eleven years and the steepage in an era of hardship had wreaked their mark.

Time really was a heedless bitch.

"And my, my, what an honor it is to be alone with the lady of the house yet again," Facilier sneered. "Welcome to almost-middle-age, pretty lady. I'm surprised y'all ain't wearin' a tiara. Heh. "

Tiana spared no acid. "I don't buy your shufflin' sambo crap, Shadowman. I don't buy that you have a single honest reason to be here. Unlike Arshad, who is too trustin' for his own good, and unlike Naveen, who is too busy trying to manage this place right and left, I am not takin' my eyes off you for a SECOND."

The Voodoo master hoisted a stack of pots and pans out of the pantry. "Whoof! Ugh. Look. Ain't no lies on the form I filled out for the whitey who sent me here, Magical Madam Malledonia."

"My name…as you WELL know, you INSANE, DISRESPECTFUL, CHEATIN' FILTH of a man. Is _Tiana_."

"Alrighty then, _Tiana_, DAR-lin'," Faciler growled, pitching his voice sultry and predatory. "The point being, I have been a chef as long as I have been OTHER things, and I need money, and so long as I don't act up, you, missy, are, legally speakin', bound to give me some green. We've sorta already HAD this conversation."

"Fine. Then do you think you can handle a gumbo?" Tiana angled a dark penetrating stare at the witch doctor, head to toe and back. The suspicion surrounding her frame was almost material. "Or should I worry about it being…palatable?"

"LISTEN, Sugar Princess," Facilier suddenly, savagely snapped, slamming down the pots. "You may rightly hate me, but don't patronize me. I've brewed potions for goin' on twenty-fi' _years_ that would _turn your hair white_, an' way the hell back when, I was an oyster shucker right along with the brightest an' best of Louisiana's child labor force, so believe you _me_, I can cook a stew. Feel free to lock away the cyanide and arsenic if you so _terrified_ I'll be stupidly obvious enough to poison all your customers. Or _yoouuuu_." The fiery tirade ended on that note, with a sarcastically portentious wiggling of his long digits, and a sinister gap-toothed smile.

Then Facilier rolled his eyes and turned around, hoisting the dishes into the sink and proceeding toward the spice rack. "I neeeeeeed a _ladel_," he pronounced imperiously, with a snap of his fingers. He assumed the airs of a Baptist preacher, flinging back his head in the throes of facetious religious transportation…and also shaking his extremely scrawny posterior. "Can I GIT. A ladel? SAY hallelujah: a LA-del. Hooooyes, Lord, there it BE." He reached.

Tiana was not particularly comforted. Or impressed. Or amused. Or intimidated. Because she was…well, Tiana. "Have a ladel," she hissed, snatching and shoving her best into his spiderlike hands, "an' you know where you can _shove it_ if you don't do your job _fast and well_."

The Doctor did not produce a comeback, aside a morose "like to see you try, Beignet Fairy."

"Oh I will," she snarled, storming out of the kitchen. "Don't forget, I have a trumpet-playing gator with a grudge to sic on you, at my disposal." The doors swung closed decisively behind her.

Fury broiled inside the witch doctor at this ultimatum. With the coveted ladel, he stirred half a bottle of Tabasco into the gumbo pot that sat on the stove. He wrinkled his nose at the vessel; it was at least two decades old, black and cast iron. He couldn't see his reflection in it, and for some reason that unnerved him. Perhaps it reminded him too much of a gravestone. His own.

Facilier huffed and stepped away from the stove. Sweat beaded his forehead and dampened his already untamed, un- jellied shock of black curly hair. He wiped away the excess moisture and paced around the kitchen while the gumbo came to a rolling boil. Energies swirled around inside his chest and wiry limbs, pent-up energies of a schemer unused to conventional boundaries and limitations. With a sudden explosion of those forces, Facilier took a running bound into the air, heels tapping together, past the ice box and shelves of utensils and pots and pans and sinks, and landed with effortless grace on nearly the opposite perimeter of the room. "Heyyy," he murmured to himself with a thickly smug, narcissistic smirk, "look who _definitely_ ain't dead."

He glanced at his own shadow: it was, whether depressingly or comfortingly he wasn't sure, normal. Complacent and mindless. No extraneous or individual gestures. It mimicked his every move. No ally and attendant from the Other Side.

"Huh," he added, feeling undeniably naked at the stripping of the powers that had defined him for over two decades. Now this was a feeling of oppression he had to shake off.

Like a grasshopper, the Shadowman bounded, twirled, cartwheeled and sashayed back to the gumbo pot. An inner peace, the pleasure of which surpassed even the manic elation he had always felt conjuring Voodoo powers, saturated him as he danced.

'That's an interesting way to cook a stew, Doc. And in _my_ daddy's gumbo pot."

_Oh. Her again_.

"_Yes, _ma'am?" Facilier queried through his teeth. He straightened and placed his hands on his sharp lean hips, tossing his hair out of his face. His sweaty borrowed shirt, trousers and apron clung to his slight frame as he angled an insubordinate scowl at his boss. When Tiana only glowered back, he added, "It's only been ten damn minutes, woman! I'm going as fast as I can, don't you know, I'm cookin' _myself _in here!" He fanned himself.

"Forget the stew. It was just a test run, and it's closin' time anyway. There's a child out at one of the tables. She won't say a single word, but she's clearly waiting to see someone who works here."

"And you think that someone is me becauuuse?" Facilier arched an eyebrow. "If she got a mama claimin' I'm the daddy, I don't even know if I can say one way or the other—"

"SPARE me," Tiana cut him off disgustedly as she shut off the stove's gas. "All I know is she has no interest in any of the other kitchen workers I just banished out to the floor, and she's holdin' a Tarot card like it's her soul. The, ah, Empress card?"

…_Oh. _

_Aw, damn me for a fool_.

Facilier let out a protracted groan. "Riiight," he sighed, at the end of that sound of an expiring reptile. "That's what I get for lapsing into sentimentality." A palm smacked his forehead. Repeatedly. "Damn DAMN kid. I'll killer."

Tiana quirked her lip so that one of her dimples stood out prominently. "If you were trying to hide that you know this child, I must inform you that you have lost your skills at subterfuge."

"Nono, nooo. I own up to it. Oh, Powers. Do pardon me, cherie." The witch doctor scratched the moist skin under his two-fanged necklace and then sidled past Tiana and out of the kitchen. She followed, her flesh fairly crawling at having been called a diminutive by Dr. Facilier himself.

Facilier came upon the eldest prince of Malledonia making all kinds of grotesque faces at his little friend from the cemetery, playing his newest ukulele at her, and cracking horrid puns at her. As if somehow this encroaching clownishness would magically unlock the child's inhibitions. Naveen's intentions were good, but Facilier, a master of magnetic persuasion, had to roll his eyes at the sophomoric performance. "Ye gods," he muttered.

The displaced monarch turned toward the encroacher when the child, eyes lit up with sudden hope, did the same. Naveen's face was comically perplexed as he stood and met Facilier halfway to the child's table. "Do not tell me it is actually _you_ she wants to see?" He pointed theatrically at the witch doctor.

Who pursed his lips patiently. "It's lookin' like that is the case."

"Ashidanza…But I am ravishingly handsome, and you are like a skull with skin."

_Thanks, pretty boy. Sorry to bust the diamond-encased bubble, but not every woman fawns over you for breathing…_

"Naveen," Facilier retorted in dulcet tones, "I hate you with a passion that burns like the French Disease." He batted his eyelashes for effect.

Naveen blinked. "The French _what_?"

Tiana's cheeks were distinctly bright. "Never you mind," she growled, slipping between them.

"No, no, what? I am still learning the local customs!"

Facilier snorted. He wiggled his hips and arched his eyebrows, his expression fairly screaming _"get it?"_

And Naveen's face surpassed Tiana's for ruddiness. "Oh."

Tiana blasted out an exasperated sigh. "Shadowman, either talk to the child or GIT."

"Well. Seeing as I have nowhere to git TO, I'd best put on a good show."

Naveen's embittered manservant Lawrence had once nervously exclaimed of Facilier, "You're so _quiet_!" and the witch doctor was proving that fact right now. He moved with the silent predatory elegance of a praying mantis as he approached the little girl who had followed him from the cemetery to its almost offensively opposite, the glamorous restaurant. He wasn't sure why—perhaps his clever charisma and natural way of calibrating himself to the emotional needs of potential swindle-ees, or perhaps something more innocent—but regardless, he was kneeling to the child's eye level before he had even reached her.

_Okay, Magician, build rapport with the client_, he cued himself, and tilted his long slender face up and to the side in an attempt to meet her eyes.

It proved a difficult task. The child's eyes, flecked in cherry and honey amber, immediately averted whenever confronted by his amethyst gaze. Evidently, his empty threats of hours earlier had made their mark.

He wanted to be angry at this kid who'd filched his Tarot card. He wanted to hate and terrify her. He wanted to displace his resentful fury at all the changed, cold world onto her fragile frame like she was a poppet with "whole world" embroidered across its belly, and pierce it and burn it and rip out its stuffing and…and. He wanted to. He _ached_ to.

He couldn't.

So Facilier acknowledged the silent plea for space and sat back on his lean haunches. "Hey again. How y'all doin'?" he ventured at last. Either he was putting on airs of remarkably convincing gravitas, or he truly was, for once, dead serious.

The little girl shrugged in response.

"Aw, now. Come on. You can give that sass to those weirdoes over there. But y'all followed ME all the way from a place where they bury DEAD people. Ya gotta give me more effort than," and he gave a Vaudeville-esque exaggerated shrug of mimicry, "_this_. Eh? Come on now."

Nothing.

Facilier rubbed the moisture out of the nape of his neck. "Ah, huh…You can put that card on my tab. I was wantin' it back because I thought I had a chance to use the deck properly. Person who gave it to me's dead…so is what I coulda done with it. So is the…whole world it was part of. Long gone. Just…forget it. Keep the darn thing."

_I'll find a way to get it back later._ _Best you get, little missy. Ain't gonna apologize._

Several minutes passed with rain on the tin roof of the emptied restaurant the only sound. Facilier was keenly, annoyedly aware of the audience behind them. Especially when Naveen coughed and Tiana made more noise than necessary clearing dishes off one of the tables the waitresses had missed.

And that was when Facilier realized the real problem at hand. "I think what we have here is a little case of stage fright," he drawled over his shoulder, with a look ten times as dirty as any dish at the tables. "Your royal highnesses," he added sardonically, with a scornful to-fro bob of his head.

Tiana, sharp as a tack, registered the prompt at once, but her husband, whose sleeve she fiercely tugged, who was gazing at the poor little girl with large sympathetic puppy eyes, was slower.

"Go discuss the French Disease with your wife _in another room_, grits-for-brains," Facilier snapped. He made a less than polite gesture in the direction of the kitchens to punctuate the point.

Naveen scowled, thrust his hands on his classically sculpted hips, and murmured a string of likely colorful phrases in a smattering of French and Malledonian; Facilier picked up the French parts, snorted, and facetiously saluted the prince as the princess successfully dragged him elsewhere.

"JE-sus," the witch doctor muttered. "Ain't no wonder the aristocracy's dying." He shook his head at the child as if they were conspirators in crime forced to bear the idiocy of the masses surrounding them. It wasn't hard to play that role. After all, this was the way Facilier actually felt about most of the people—expendable souls, leverage—that he encountered. "ANYwa—"

But he didn't finish the sentence before the desired effect took place: The little girl's face lit up like a tree full of radiant fireflies. She took one of his hands, attenuated almost amphibian fingers and all, excitedly in both of her own, and pumped it. There was an unspoken "pleased to make your acquaintance once more" in the gesture.

"Well, hey, there, missy," Facilier chuckled, forehead furling in incredulity. He was unused to an easy audience. Lots of mirages and bamboozelry typically predicated this sort of ecstasy at his very existence. But then again, his audience was usually a pack of hardened, desperate, empty-souled adults craving something beyond rational bounds. Easy prey. Not a child, with a child's piercing intuition and a child's self-sufficient joy in small daily pleasures. Children were, contrary to popular belief, the hardest sort to fool in the way that Facilier was used to fooling.

The Voodoo master shook his head clear. "Ah. Listen. No one else here now. You can talk. Gimme your name, sugar."

Again the stony silence. The child shook her head.

"How am I gonna call your mama to take you home if I don't know your name?"

Another shake of the head. More emphatic.

"Ah. No mama?"

A nodded affirmative.

"Mm. Me neither."

The little girl immediately grabbed Facilier's face, as if she were a preacher keeping an errant soul from flying to hell. Her eyes were moist.

For a second time in five minutes Facilier was startled and his wide purple eyes showed it. "Whoa whoa. Easy. I'm just dandy, don't you know. It was a long time ago. She gave me them cards, you know." He repressed the urge to burst into laughter at the child's silly fervency. "…you know you've got eyes like pennies in a fountain. Very pretty."

The little girl released her formidable grip and shyly hid her face in her hands. She reached for the tablecloth of the table at which she uneasily sat. She grabbed the pen from Facilier's apron and began to write in crude, sometimes backward, letters.

_Ah. Shit_. He raked his fingers through his hair. "I am going to blame you for ruining that tablecloth," he informed the little girl. "Cos my boss already don't like me."

The girl didn't seem to hear him; instead she pointed fiercely at the table until it was a wonder there wasn't a tiny finger-shaped dent in the wood.

Facilier was amused and even strangely delighted at this peculiar human being against all of his meanly whittled selfish instincts. He bit his lip against more gutteral chuckles and investigated the chicken scratch.

_You has eyes like violets_, it read.

Facilier felt like he had just been tossed in an icy shower after a long carousing gin-filled night in the French Quarter. It was a feeling both relieving and unpleasant at once and he wasn't sure why. It had something to do with the sudden uselessness of his stunned verbal faculties and the feeling that it mattered to him, to an alarming extent, that this kid liked him so much. "Uhm," he said, most articulately.

And then the little girl pinched his arm. Sulking.

"OW, damn, child, what was THAT for?!"

More sulking.

"Oh. Ahem. Thank you?"

Another instant incandescent smile.

"…Aaaalllrighty then. But it's have. You HAVE eyes like violets. HAVE. I…oh hell. Never mind. I'm a witch doctor, I ain't no goddamn schoolteacher. But you can write, good. Think you could whip me up a name? I got eighty thousand dishes to wash tonight." He arched an eyebrow directively at the child.

She bit her lip. After a long moment, she wrote, _It starts with E_.

"E? Oh, magnifique. That's right helpful. 'E, practice your grammar.' 'Now, E, don't you talk my arm off.' 'That's a good girl, E.' Tuh. So that's all I'm gettin' outta you?"

E, as she had christened herself, let out a silvery giggle. Her pigeon toes turned farther inward in delight.

Facilier gazed back at her in blatant dismay. Some damn little kid had stumped the Shadowman. What was the world coming to? Maybe he should have stayed "dead."

E doodled a little heart next to her first, sweet yet grammatically erroneous, sentence. Then she doodled the twin sets of eyes on Facilier's set of tarot cards in the center of that heart. She beamed.

The Doctor rubbed his temples. "I give up. Y'all can STOP EAVESDROPPING NOW," he brayed at the door to the kitchens. He turned toward the doors with that rather menacing, curling snarl of his lip that signified his ultimate vexation and displeasure. "Like I'm some kinda pervert," he muttered. "Well supposing I am, but not like THAT…"

Naveen and Tiana poked their heads out in succession guiltily. "Maybe we can phone the police," the latter suggested.

There was an explosive racket, a scuttling, at E's table.

Facilier turned back in alarm: to find the little girl dashing in blind panic out the front of Tiana's Place. He glanced back at the others, utterly bewildered, then growled and stood.

"Follow her!" Naveen cried, booking it toward the door.

"No_, really?_ Your genius _slays_ me!" Facilier snarled, pursuing the monarch and easily, with his dancing litheness, overtaking him. He caught the prince's arm at the door. "If she don't _wanna_ be followed, let her BE. You two wanted her goin' home, well, _problem solved_! She ain't here no more!"

"But it is raining!" Naveen protested, his accent pronounced and his grasp of English impaired in his distress. "She is, is, how you say, only a _child_! What if it is a long train ride to her home? Eh?! She was not dressed in finery! She cannot be from around here! She cannot go home alone on the train or worse, by, by feets!"

"By FOOT, cretin. FOOT. Anyway, if she got here, she can get BACK where she WAS. I'm _done_. Enough philanthropy for tonight. I carried my weight and I, sir, am goin' to BED." Facilier whipped around and away from the nauseatingly charitable couple and headed for the stairs to the loft.

He left behind him the voice of Naveen castigating him as a "selfish godless brute," and the sensible soothing murmurs of Tiana. So why couldn't he leave behind the face of the strange child who called herself E and wrote kind messages to him on a tablecloth?

About his damn purple eyes, his first ever Voodoo trick? His fruitless attempt to apologize to his dead mother? Why?

"I'm goin' batty," Facilier groaned at the ceiling in the dark, long after the doors to the restaurant had clicked shut with the departure of its proprietress and her husband.

He sat up in bed, and he spread out his Tarot cards. He ran his fingers along the borders, closed his eyes, breathed deeply, shuffled, and pulled.

The Devil. Well that was no surprise. So the Powers were telling him he'd relinquished himself to his darker, more negative impulses. That like a cancer from within, he had devoured himself and flung himself into the jaws of his contemptuous, otherworldly "Friends." The Devil was the shadow that must be cast, wherever there was light. A fact about the deepest chambers of any human heart.

So he was weak. Given to tempting, hedonistic things. Fine. Who gave a shit? He'd looked _that_ fact square in the eye ages ago.

He shuffled The Devil back into his pile. He pulled his present. Ace of Swords. Huh. Duality. The potential for great good or great evil. The bearer of the sword determines the direction taken on the crossroads of a life. The bearer of the sword wields it either with wickedness and caprice, or with protective, honorable service.

So he had to make a big decision and soon. Facilier saw no point in stewing now, when he wasn't certain of the topic of the crucial choice he would have to render. He shuffled Ace of Swords back into his deck with a shrug.

Then Facilier turned over the card of his future. And this was the card that drew his attention, the card of faith and gentle guidance, the card that he had never pulled for himself before…

… the Star.

_You has eyes like violets_….

Facilier put his tarot away with shaking hands and tried to shed the epiphany like a lizard shedding an old skin. He curled up on his side facing the ladder to the loft and, swallowed by the shadows that had once been friends, did not sleep at all.


End file.
